Social justice, solidarity and sharing open doors while deregulation leads to exploding inequality.

By Dean Baker

The cost of making social security solvent for 75 years amounts to 0.58 of the GDP. The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan amounts to 3 times that much. The cost of transferring wealth to the top 1% over the past 30 years is 6% of the GDP, 10 times as much as the social security cost. But it is only the shortfall in Social Security that the media want us to see as a crisis.

Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. He is a regular Truthout columnist and a member of Truthout's Board of Advisers.

to read Dean Baker's article published in www.truth-out.org, November 7, 2011, click on

(c) Independent Media Center. All content is free for reprint and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere,
for non-commercial use, unless otherwise noted by author. IMC not for content (expand this). more...